KEY POINTS:
Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven wants an immediate ban on people using hand-held cellphones while driving.
His position is at odds with the Cabinet, which this week stopped short of proposing a ban on cellphone use at the wheel in a road safety policy statement.
Lumping cellphone use with other driver distractions and fatigue, the Government indicated that these would be dealt with by education and information campaigns rather than as criminal offences.
But Mr Duynhoven, who launched the policy statement with Transport Minister Annette King on Wednesday, wrote to the Herald the next day to defend himself against readers who wrote letters criticising him for not taking steps to outlaw cellphone use.
One reader accused the minister of "getting ever more weak-kneed" by arguing it would be difficult to enforce a ban.
Mr Duynhoven protested in his letter that he "remained very concerned about cellphone use while driving. In fact, if it were solely up to me, handheld cellphones would be banned immediately."
He said cellphone use was just one of many potentially dangerous driver distractions. "Unruly children in cars, smoking, changing a CD, eating food - all these distractions can also cause crashes and endanger lives."
The minister said it was well proven internationally that successful road safety measures involved education, engineering and enforcement.
Officials appear to have their work cut out to educate drivers in Auckland at least, where the Weekend Herald photographed 18 who were talking or texting on cellphones at central city junctions.
The photographer spent two hours between 1pm and 3pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, one time at the intersections of Queen and Shortland Sts and the other at the junction of High and Victoria Sts.
He said he saw many more using cellphones than he was able to capture on camera, his most alarming observation being of a man holding a hamburger in one hand and texting with the other while trying to balance his steering wheel with spare fingers.
Automobile Association motoring affairs manager Mike Noon said he had not given up hope the Government would outlaw the practice, as most AA members wanted.
Although opposition to hand-held cellphone use in cars was running high, as instanced by a Herald-DigiPoll survey last year in which 75.6 per cent of 750 people wanted it banned, Mr Noon predicted that educational campaigns would raise awareness to the point this would become inevitable.
"The best legislation is when 80 per cent of people support it," he said.
The Herald survey followed the ministry's disclosure that 17 people had died in cellphone-related road smashes in seven years from 1997.
Concerns about the issue have risen in recent days following police suspicion that 16-year-old Ohope driver Sharleen Lloyd was texting when her car hit a parked trailer, killing her. Her family dispute that.
Police also suspect that a 15-year-old tractor driver was texting when he died in a crash at the Whitford landfill near Auckland last month.
Mr Noon said texting and reading emails on cellphone took the dangers to a new level from simply holding phone conversations.
